Justice Department sues Adobe over subscription cancellation policies

The US Department of Justice Today for follow-up Adobe Inc. for allegedly making it unnecessarily difficult to unsubscribe from its software products.

In addition to the company, the complaint names executives David Wadhwani and Maninder Sawhney as defendants. Wadhwani is president of Adobe’s digital media business, which includes its creative applications. Sawhney is the President of Digital Marketing and Sales.

The Justice Department filed the lawsuit following a referral from the Federal Trade Commission. According to the complaint, the FTC found that Adobe violated a 2010 law called the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act. The company allegedly did this by making canceling subscriptions to its apps too complicated and costly for consumers.

At the center of the suit is an Adobe pricing tier called Annual, Paid Monthly. It provides a one-year subscription to the customer’s selected Adobe product, but is billed monthly rather than annually. According to the FTC, Adobe often pre-selects the Paid Annual and Monthly option in its e-commerce payment pages.

Consumers who purchase such a subscription and decide to cancel it must pay an early cancellation fee. These fees, which only apply after 14 days and during the first year of subscription, amount to half the value of the customer’s unpaid monthly payments. The FTC accuses Adobe of hiding these termination fees in fine print and pop-up tooltips.

On the company’s payments page, the interface panel for the Annual, Paid Monthly option includes a snippet of text that says “Fees apply if you cancel after 14 days.” The FTC has determined that this text is displayed in a font smaller than the subscription price.

Consumers can access more detailed information about termination fees by hovering over a toolbox icon next to the disclosure. According to the Justice Department, the tooltip uses an even smaller font than the first snippet of text. Additionally, the lawsuit accuses consumers who read the tooltip of “still not receiving concrete information about” the amount of the termination fee, how it is calculated, and to which product it applies.

The second section of the lawsuit focuses on the usability of Adobe’s subscription cancellation interface. According to the Justice Department, users sometimes have to navigate two settings panels on the company’s website to get to the “cancel your plan” button. Additionally, clicking at the bottom does not immediately unsubscribe users from the product they purchased.

“Adobe forced them to go through a convoluted process requiring several additional steps, some of which were completely unnecessary. cancellation,” the Justice Department said.

The lawsuit also calls into question Adobe’s customer support operations. According to the lawsuit, users sometimes have to request cancellation of a subscription multiple times before the request is fulfilled. Additionally, these requests are not always processed correctly.

“In many cases, subscribers who requested to cancel through the Adobe service Customer service thinks they have canceled successfully but continue to be billed,” the lawsuit charges. “Some of these subscribers don’t realize for months that Adobe continues to charge them and only learn of the charges by reviewing their financial accounts.”

The Justice Department is asking the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to impose fines for Adobe’s subscription cancellation practices. Additionally, authorities are seeking an injunction that will force the company to change the policies in question.

Photo: Adobe